The fall turned out to be extraordinary, the collapse astonishing. The Mets’ season is over, an ultimately dreadful meltdown that finished mercifully yesterday at Shea.
It’s never been more appropriate for a team to play in a city called Flushing.
The Mets’ reign as National League East champs has been shattered, and ditto their hope to be in the playoffs.
Their historic collapse was completed amid plenty of empty seats during Luis Castillo’s at-bat to end the ninth inning. When he went down swinging, that totaled the Mets for good, and left a potentially curious aftermath.
The Mets were humiliated in the final stretch of the season, and yesterday they were embarrassed by the Marlins 8-1 in their year-ending game. The Phillies – handling their responsibility – won, and they’re the new NL East champs.
As for the Mets, they became the first team to ever own a seven-game lead with 17 games to play and not win the division or league, an incredible freefall.
“One through 25, to me we’re all responsible,” Paul Lo Duca said. “We got every chance in the world and we didn’t deserve to go. Bottom line.”
“We [screwed] it up as a team,” Pedro Martinez said. “Plain and simple.”
Indeed. What may be more mysterious, however, is what the Mets do with Willie Randolph, the manager for this debacle. Randolph signed an extension this past winter and is locked up through 2009. Yesterday, Omar Minaya raved about him but wouldn’t offer a flat-out, 100-percent guarantee that he’ll return, thus leaving the door open.
Minaya said, “I can tell you that Willie Randolph for the last three years here, has turned the franchise around in a lot of ways.” He also said, “Myself, I believe in Willie Randolph.”
But Minaya also said he would be talking to ownership. Yesterday COO Jeff Wilpon wouldn’t talk about anything.
“I’m a big boy,” Randolph said. “I know how things work. I know that I’m accountable for my job.”
After losing Friday, David Wright said that “this is on the players,” and as the line in the movie “Miracle” says, “Plenty there to keep you busy.” The Mets botched this final 17-game stretch – and therefore botched their overall season – with horrible bullpen work, terrible defense, an atrocious Jose Reyes (.187, four errors in final 17 games, booed like crazy yesterday) and maybe a worse Tom Glavine, who took the hill yesterday.
In at least one of the most important starts of his career and in perhaps the final one he’ll ever have, Glavine authored one of most pitiful performances of his life. He recorded one out.
Glavine couldn’t finish the first inning, tossing only one-third of it and allowing seven runs on five hits, two walks, a hit-by-pitch and his own bad throwing error. The Mets were down 7-0 in the first, and they had some opportunities early to recover, but – what do you know? – they didn’t take advantage.
“This will take awhile for all of us to get over,” Glavine said. “You could point fingers at anything and everything.”
Said Billy Wagner, “It’s embarrassing. That’s the big thing.”
The Mets went 5-12 in their final 17 games, and after winning the NL East last year and going to NLCS Game 7, their season has ended in extreme heartbreak and humiliation.
“It’s obviously painful. It hurts,” Wright said. “But at the same time, we did it to ourselves. It’s not like we didn’t see this coming and it blindsided us. We gradually let this thing slip away.”
“This is a tough moment for us,” Carlos Delgado said. “We had it in our hand.”
They have nothing now. Except a collapse.
– Additional reporting by Joel Sherman and Mike Vaccaro